


Catch Me When I Fall

by ravenbringslight



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Also kind of, Angst, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Romance, Sibling Incest, So much angst, kind of, thor and loki have a lot of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-17
Updated: 2016-11-17
Packaged: 2018-08-31 11:06:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8575927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenbringslight/pseuds/ravenbringslight
Summary: Set after the events of Thor. Loki falls and Thor goes after him. 
  He was only truly left with one option, the option he should have taken from the start had he not been a coward. Thor strode forth from his rooms late that night. He tightened his armor and checked his pack for the tenth time before squaring his shoulders. The edge of the broken Bifrost crunched under his feet. The Void swirled below him. He grasped Mjolnir and leaped.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Visit me at <https://raven-brings-light.tumblr.com>

After Loki fell, Thor mourned.

The Midgardians had taught him a bit about perspective and humility and self-sacrifice, and for that he was grateful, but they could never have prepared him for the monstrous tragedy that he had come home to. “I’m not your brother, I never was.” Loki’s words echoed in his head. They had been nonsense at the time, madness. But after Loki fell and Thor returned to the palace, dull and numb, his mother had pulled him gently into her arms and told him everything. Each word had fallen from her lips like a stone into the well of his grief. He had thanked her politely, then locked the door to his chambers and destroyed every single piece of furniture in them.

After Loki fell, Thor raged.

How could Odin have done such a thing? How could Frigga have done such a thing? No one could fault them for taking in a foundling, but then to lie and lie and lie and raise their Jotun son to hate his own race? The more Thor thought on it the more his guts twisted into knots. And to what end? Thor and Loki had both been raised to rule, so Thor could only conclude that his father meant to install Loki on the throne of Jotunheim as...as what? As an ally? A puppet? Thor’s mind was not accustomed to such craftiness and he struggled to make sense of it. He paced his rooms like a caged animal and turned away every invitation and summons from his mother and father both.

After Loki fell, Thor planned.

He spent three days and three nights locked in his rooms with his thoughts running in endless circles like a serpent biting its own tail. He had to find Loki, or what was left of him, anyway. Heimdall might be able to see Loki, but he would not be much help without the Bifrost. Frigga might be able to use her sorcery to transport Thor, but in truth Thor was not ready to speak with her face to face. At the end of it, he was only truly left with one option, the option he should have taken from the start had he not been a coward. Thor strode forth from his rooms late that night. He tightened his armor and checked his pack for the tenth time before squaring his shoulders. The edge of the broken Bifrost crunched under his feet. The Void swirled below him. He grasped Mjolnir and leaped.

 

* * *

 

Thor spent a very long time falling. Galaxies and nebulas enfolded him in a string of tiny eternities. He slept, or maybe he just fell unconscious, but Mjolnir’s aim was straight and true.

When his senses returned to him, he was lying on cold rocky dirt and gravel was pressing into his cheek. Centuries of warrior’s training brought him to his feet in an instant, backing around in a wary circle, Mjolnir flying up into his hand from where she had fallen next to him. Finding no immediate danger, he relaxed marginally. He appeared to have landed on some kind of barren asteroid. Maybe. Probably. Astrogeology was not his strong suit. There were no signs of organic life around him, but the rocks themselves were twisted into grotesque, leering shapes that may as well have been monsters. 

Thor picked his way around the blasted landscape fruitlessly searching for any clues of Loki’s whereabouts. A creeping panic began to gnaw at the edges of his mind, but he pushed it firmly away. Loki had to be here. There was no other option. Dead or alive, he would find him in this place. 

There was no other option.

 

* * *

 

Thor was finally admitting to himself that perhaps hurling himself into the Void with no backup plan had been a bit _rash_ when he was bowled over mid-thought by a chittering insect the size of a hunting hound. He nearly laughed in relief. Finally, something other than rock and dirt! Five more burst from the rocks around him. He kept them easily at bay with Mjolnir. She fairly sang in his hand, as glad for battle as he was. 

He had just finished the insects off when a hundred more came pouring down the rocks around him.

“Shit,” he said.

They swarmed him quickly, wrapping him in his own cloak with their hideous mandibles and bearing him off in their writhing mass like a swaddled babe. Thor did not struggle overmuch. Perhaps Loki had endured similar treatment, he imagined. Perhaps Loki was enduring similar treatment right now.

The swarm carried him through a mazelike area of jagged rock columns and headed straight for a cliff face. They showed no signs of slowing and Thor closed his eyes to brace for impact. But none came. He opened them to find they were in a cave. He twisted as best he could to see behind him and found that the insects were scuttling through the solid wall, which apparently actually wasn’t so solid. A glamour?

The walls glowed blue, just enough to see by. The low tunnel they were in opened into a dusty cavern peppered with stalactites and stalagmites. There was a table and chair here, and a small brazier. The swarm gathered in on itself to shove Thor upright and forward so that only his face was exposed, hanging out of their pulsing mass of bodies. The figure sitting in the chair rose and regarded them impassively. It was mostly humanoid, but the upper half of its face was obscured by a hood so that Thor could not tell its race.

“Who are you?” it asked.

“I am Thor Odinson of Asgard and who are you, foul -”

“Oh, another Asgardian,” it said. “Put it with the other one I suppose. I will attend to it shortly.” The figure waved its hand irritably at the insects.

Thor’s pulse quickened.

He was borne off again and this time he was deposited rudely onto the floor of another small cavern. He felt a pop as he fell through the entryway and the air shimmered briefly. But that didn’t matter, because in this chamber, shackled to a chair in the corner, slumped Loki.

His head was bowed, his normally sleek hair a riotous mess. His eyes were closed and his jaw hung slightly slack. A thin sheen of sweat covered his pallid face and his eyes were ringed in dark circles. On the table in front of him sat a glowing blue staff.

Thor was at his side in an instant, running his hands over every part of Loki he could touch, checking for injuries. Loki stirred, then snapped his head up roughly. His eyes, normally bright green, looked blue, feverish

“Loki,” Thor choked out, voice thick with emotion.

“Is this a punishment? Am I being punished?” Loki said shrilly, eyes darting to the ceiling. “I’ve been cooperating!” he cried out. “I’ve been good! Please! Call off your illusion!”

“Loki,” Thor repeated. “It’s me. I’ve come to rescue you.”

“Of course you have,” Loki said snidely. “Call off your illusion!” he cried to the ceiling again. “You’ve already gotten what you want from me, haven’t you?”

Thor stared at him helplessly. “Loki please, what is this madness? I’m here. I’m here.”

A single tear fell down Loki’s cheek. “They’ve tricked me before. I’ll not fall for it again.”

Thor’s throat threatened to close completely. “Brother,” he said miserably. “We must escape now, before that creature comes back. Let me strike your shackles.”

Loki laughed, voice high with hysteria. “Oh yes, by all means! I’ve already escaped several times but it was never real. That’s how they break you, you know,” the last he added in an exaggerated stage whisper. 

Thor could not find any more words, but actions always came more naturally to him anyway. He struck Loki’s shackles with Mjolnir and Loki flinched away from the sparks. Thor pulled his brother to his feet and steadied him. Loki clung to him like a drowning man. He was muttering.

“No no no no no. I’ll not fall for it. No no no.” The fevered blue eyes looked up at Thor, searching. “But you seem so real this time.”

Thor clutched Loki to his side and strode to the forcefield sealing off their cavern. Mjolnir rang like a bell when he hit it, but it didn’t break. “Brother, can your sorcery help with this?” Thor asked.

“No. If it could, I wouldn't still be here.”

Thor heard chittering in the distance. “Damn, they heard it.” He stared at the forcefield for a moment, then made a decision. He swung Mjolnir at the rock wall of the cavern entrance. And again. And again. The chittering was growing stronger but the rock wall was beginning to crumble.

“Is this how you solve every problem?” Loki said. “You need to learn a new trick, Thor, you'll become predictable.” Thor glared at him, but two swings later and enough wall had crumbled for them to squeeze out. Insects were just starting to surge down the tunnel towards them.

“Hold tight, brother,” Thor said, wrapping his left arm around Loki and spinning Mjolnir. They took off like a streak just as the first insect clacked at their heels. Mjolnir flew them through the cavern with the hooded figure with enough speed to nearly rip the cloak from its body with the wind of their passing.

They burst out of the glamoured cave wall and into a field of stars. 

They dove and hurtled as close to the ground as Thor dared, trying to stay out of sight and put as much distance as he could between them and their pursuers. He set them down in a secluded bowl of rock to take stock.

Loki was doubled over gasping, halfway between sobbing and laughing. 

“Well this is much farther than I've gotten before! Well done! I wonder how they'll punish me this time!”

Thor grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “Loki, this is no trick! We need to leave this place!”

“Shall we call for Heimdall?” Loki inquired nastily. Thor gritted his teeth.

“I thought perchance you could find us one of your secret ways,” he said.

“Perchance. Perchance! This was your plan? Follow me into the Void with no way home? How monumentally idiotic, Thor. Maybe you really are real. Only a witless oaf would -” Loki was cut off abruptly by Thor’s finger on his lips.

Thor stared at Loki's chin as he spoke. “If I found you I knew you could get us home. And if I didn't find you, there was no home for me to go back to, so it mattered not.” He looked back up at Loki's eyes. They still looked blue, even away from the blue light of the cave and the staff. The corners of Loki's mouth were trembling.

“I tried to kill you,” Loki said.

“Yes,” Thor agreed. “It is already forgotten.”

Loki closed his eyes and swallowed. “There is a way,” he said. “But it leads not to Asgard.”

 

* * *

 

“I need to find a place where the...fabric...is thin,” Loki explained.

“Fabric?” Thor said.

“Space-time, reality, what you call it matters not. Quiet please.” Loki dropped his head and his breathing deepened. 

“Loki,” Thor said.

“I said quiet!”

“LOKI!” Thor cried. The insects were upon them and this time the hooded figure was with them. Thor tossed a protesting Loki over his shoulder and took to the air again. The insects paced them on the ground. “Brother! Can you still work your sorcery from here!” Thor called. 

“I AM NOT YOUR BROTHER!” Loki screamed, pounding on Thor’s back impotently. “Bear to your right. Right. RIGHT, Thor!” A rock pillar loomed suddenly in their path but Thor, leading with Mjolnir, merely smashed through it. Boulders crashed into the sea of insects beneath them. “Now to the left. Too far. Straight now!” Loki’s face was screwed up in concentration as he dug the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Straight. Just a bit more. Up. Yes. Up. HERE.”

Thor hung in midair, Mjolnir spinning, Loki dangling from his shoulder. Loki raised his trunk and did something with his hands and a shimmering rift appeared in the air. “Now!” he cried, and Thor shot through the rift like a scarlet arrow.

 

* * *

 

They landed hard in a tree-lined clearing filled with soft dirt and softer grass. The sky was still filled with stars, but they were the familiar stars of night time rather than the dizzying backdrop of space that they had been on the asteroid.

Loki rolled onto his back and coughed. “Well,” he said.

“Where are we?” Thor asked, leaping to his feet, hammer at the ready.

“No need for theatrics,” Loki said, getting gingerly to his feet. “We’re in my...special place. We’re quite safe.” He winced.

“Special place?”

“Yes, it’s a small pocket of extra dimensional space that I discovered a few centuries ago. How else do you think I’ve been avoiding Heimdall’s sight all these years?” The words tumbled out, uncharacteristically forthcoming, and Loki looked dismayed but not surprised. “Please don’t ask me any more questions,” he pleaded.

“Why not?”

“Because they bound my mind with that staff that we left behind to speak truthfully.” Loki clapped his hands over his mouth as if trying to hold the words in. “I cannot lie and I cannot refuse to answer,” he gritted out. “They intended to break me to their will and use me to -”

Thor could bear to hear no more. “Hush, brother, peace,” he said. “Can you take us home from here?”

“I can only leave the way I enter. If we leave now it will be only to throw ourselves back into mortal peril.”

“Oh,” Thor said, chagrined.

“I am not entirely without resources though,” Loki continued. “I do have a small library here, mostly illegal books that I have acquired illegally. There is bound to be something that can help our...predicament.”

 

* * *

 

Loki turned out to have a cozy, well-appointed cavern not far from the clearing. It was nothing like the bleak caves they had left behind on the asteroid. The walls were hung with rich fabrics and a full four poster bed occupied the entire back half. There were bookshelves and work tables and a fire pit that Thor soon filled with a cheery blaze. He dug some bread and water from his pack.

“I never knew you had such a place as this,” Thor wondered aloud. He sat on a pile of blankets and cushions, stirring the fire. His cloak and armor lay abandoned on the cave floor.

“Yes, you never knew a great many things about me.” Loki pulled his fur tighter around his shoulders. His eyes still looked sunken and bruised and that wrong shade of blue.

“I wish to know more,” Thor said softly. “When did it all go wrong Loki?” His heart clenched.

“I have thought on that many an hour,” Loki murmured. He stared into the fire. “How can you reduce to an instant that which took centuries to build to fruition?” Thor hardly dared to breathe. Loki continued. “Was it the instant that Mjolnir chose you instead of me? When I knew for certain that you were worthy and I was not? Or was it before that, the instant that Odin stole me from Jotunheim and set us all on this disastrous course?”

Loki held out one trembling hand. It flickered and turned blue, covered in a delicate tracery of lines and sworls. “I am a monster, Thor,” Loki whispered, eyes bright with unshed tears.

“No. No.” Thor shook his head vehemently. “You are no monster. You are Loki. You are my family.” He took Loki’s ice cold blue hand in his own. “I know that I have been an arrogant fool. I know that apologizing now cannot make up for centuries of treating you ill.” He turned Loki’s hand over in his own. “But I would like to start again. Jotun or no, I love you.”

Loki pulled his hand away and let out a short laugh. “Yes, you love me. I know. You love me as a man loves a dog, as a farmer loves his prize chicken. Always a step below. Never equal.” His eyes bored into Thor’s. “I will not live in the shadow of your greatness any longer.”

“That’s not true,” Thor begged.

“I can speak only the truth,” Loki said, each word a knife.

“And you?” Thor said, desperate. “Do you not love me as well?”

“Of course I love you,” Loki said. “I also hate you. I hate that I love you. I look on you and I feel sick with jealousy and contempt both. I want to fuck you and kill you and BE you.” He was breathing very fast. He buried his face in his arms and groaned. “And now that you know it I want to die of the shame.”

It was too much for Thor to take in. He rose and turned away from Loki, hands clenching and unclenching. He chose his words very carefully. He looked fixedly at the floor.

“What Odin and Frigga have done to us, to you, is unforgivable. What we have done to each other is hardly better. But Loki, I have loved you since the moment my eyes first fell upon you and I will fight for us until the moment my eyes close for the last time. I told you I’ve changed, and I have. Let me show you. Please.”

He finally turned back. Loki was sobbing behind him, wretched heaving moans. He gathered Loki into his arms and held him until his tears were spent and he fell asleep against Thor’s shoulder. Thor gazed into the fire and finally let the tears stream unchecked down his own face.

 

* * *

 

They slept for two days. At some point Thor picked Loki up and carried him over to the bed before tucking him in and collapsing next to him. Thor’s dreams were filled with Jane screaming and Loki falling and a pair of unnaturally blue eyes.

He woke to find Loki lying next to him staring at the ceiling. His color was slightly better.

“Loki,” Thor was careful not to call him brother, “are you well?”

“No,” Loki said shortly. “And I shan’t be any time soon. I honestly thought their mind control would have worn off by now.” He turned to look at Thor. “Please don’t ask me anything today. I cannot bear to hear the answers.”

Thor nodded mutely. He reached out to clasp Loki’s neck in the manner he always had, but Loki flinched from him. Thor rose and started the fire again. He tried to keep his mind focused on the task at hand. It was easy enough as the events from the past weeks and days had piled up into a mountain that was so high it was difficult to even look at it. 

Loki disappeared out of the cave mouth and returned perhaps a half hour later to find that Thor had produced salted meat and dried vegetables from his pack and was tending to a stew. They ate their meal in silence, which stretched on for minutes after both their bowls were empty. Loki was the first to break it.

“I need to study,” he said, each word clipped. “I would appreciate it if you would occupy yourself elsewhere.”

Thor stood and briefly clasped Loki’s shoulder, then donned his armor and stepped outside. It was daylight now, or what passed for daylight here in this non-dimension. The light was weak and watery. Dense pine forest surrounded him, but Thor could hear and see no sign of any animal life. No birdsong broke the silence, no breeze stirred the tree branches. Thor wondered whether the forest was even real or if it was just an artifact of his limited mind.

He spent the day exploring the surroundings. A small stream cut through the forest, but other than that it was mostly uniform. He saw no other living being, not even an ant. He traveled as far as he could in one direction and came upon an area where the trees started to look wrong at the edges, like he was looking at them through a lens. 

He approached closer and the air started to feel thick. Time started to dilate. Forward movement stretched and slowed until time stopped completely and he was frozen. He started to panic until he realized he could still move backward. He backed up one agonizing pace after another, time speeding with each step until finally he broke out of the weird distortion and back into a normal time flow. He was shaking. He only felt like he had been exploring for a few hours at most, but the light was wrong. He flew back to the cavern immediately.

Loki was hunched over one of the tables poring over a book an armspan tall. 

“How long was I gone?” Thor demanded.

“What?” said Loki, tearing himself away from the book and blinking rapidly as his eyes adjusted.

“How long. Was I gone,” Thor repeated.

“Um. A week, perhaps?” Loki ventured. “In truth I have been so deep in my studies I’m not sure -”

Thor strode angrily towards him. “Why did you not warn me!” He grabbed Loki by the upper arms and shook him. “I was trapped at the edge of this dimension for a week and you did not warn me or look for me!”

Loki was laughing delightedly. “Oh Thor,” he said fondly. “You truly are an idiot. Did you really touch the edge?” He slipped from Thor’s grasp to turn back to his book. 

“I was gone a week, Loki,” Thor accused. “Why did you not come for me?”

“In truth I needed the space,” Loki said. His knuckles were white against the table edge. The admission clearly pained him. “I knew there was nothing in this realm that could hurt you.”

Thor sat heavily on the bed and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Well, have you found anything?” he ventured finally.

Loki pulled himself together with a small shake. “Yes,” he said. “Possibly. Probably. But Thor -” Loki turned those eerily blue eyes towards him, “I do not wish to leave until I am myself again. If I am to be bound to speak truthfully and dance to the whims of any creature with a tongue, I would rather cut my own heart out this instant.” 

Thor nodded. He understood. He did. He did not dare speak for fear it would draw more terrible truths from Loki’s lips. Instead, he went to Loki and smoothed his hair away from his face, planted a kiss on his forehead and one on each closed eyelid. 

“Please don’t,” Loki whispered, spreading his hands over Thor’s chest. “It makes it harder for me to hate you.”

 

* * *

 

They passed another week at the cave. Thor’s provisions ran out, but Loki had some tucked away. “I’ve hidden out here for months before,” he explained. Thor was getting restless. There wasn’t even anything to hunt. He almost considered getting himself stuck in the time dilation again. 

All he had to pass the time was to watch Loki and do training exercises, so he did much of both. Loki read through every book in his collection three times and his face grew increasingly drawn each time. “I just...I can’t figure it out,” he admitted.

“Come spar with me,” Thor said. “It often clears my own head.”

“Your own head is likely empty to begin with,” Loki said, but he went outside with Thor anyway. They fought each other, at first tentatively, but then with increasing passion. Loki’s face was glowing, his eyes lit with something fierce. An ill-timed dodge got him a ribful of Thor’s elbow and he went down hard, his head cracking on a rock.

“Loki, forgive me!” Thor cried as he scrambled to help. Loki was shaking his head dazedly and when he looked at Thor his eyes flickered green. Thor gasped. “Loki,” he said slowly. But they were already blue again.

 

* * *

 

They sat by the fire later and talked, Loki nursing a nasty bruise near his temple. 

“All my learning and wisdom, and it turns out the answer may be as simple as hitting me over the head with a rock,” he said in disbelief. “‘Clears my own head’ indeed.”

“I do not wish to injure you again, Loki,” Thor said gravely. Loki’s name still felt slightly odd on his tongue, used as he was to calling him brother.

“And I don’t wish to be injured again,” Loki said sourly. “But it seems promising, does it not? Perhaps I could goad you into hitting me,” he mused.

Thor’s face was a thundercloud. ”No.”

“Oh look it’s starting to work already.” Loki reclined with his hands behind his head and stretched, baring a sliver of skin at his waistband.

Thor’s eye was drawn to it like a magnet.

“I see you watching me,” Loki said, his voice low and rough. “I always see you and you’re always watching.” He pinched his lips between his fingers as if he could hold the words in physically.

“There is naught else to look at in this blasted place,” Thor grated, averting his eyes.

“And do you enjoy it?” Loki asked, rolling onto one elbow. “Do you like looking at your little brother?”

“I thought you said we were no longer brothers.”

“And we are not. Although I suspect you still think of me so. Which makes your lascivious staring that much more delicious.” Loki looked at him through slitted eyes. “Have my words from our first night here gotten under your skin, _brother_?”

Thor stood. “Goodnight, Loki,” he said to the floor. “Find a way to hit your own head. I’m going to bed.”

 

* * *

 

Thor tossed in the large four poster bed, alone with his thoughts. Loki was right. Thor had been staring. _”I want to fuck you and kill you and BE you,”_ Loki had said. The entire thought was distressing, but Thor’s damnable mind had fixated rather embarrassingly on the first part.

He could not possibly take Loki up on it. Not now with everything still unresolved between them. Loki’s innermost truths had been ripped from him, not offered freely, and to use them thus would be a monstrous betrayal. Or so Thor kept telling himself.

Loki did not join him in the bed as usual. His dreams were uneasy that night.

 

* * *

 

He woke the next morning to find Loki already at his books yet again. Loki waved him irritably out the door and he decided to go bathe in the stream. He returned still wringing water from his hair. The ground in front of the cave was littered with jagged rocks that had not been there when he left. Loki was standing atop the mouth of the cave, silhouetted against the sky. Thor stared at him for a confused instant, and then Loki forcefully threw himself from the edge.

Thor cried out and raced to catch him, but it was too late. He hit the rocks face first with a sickening thud.

“Oh you fool, you fool,” Thor wept, tears streaming down his cheeks. He knelt and gathered Loki’s head into his lap.

“Yes, yes I’m a fool, I’m a fool,” Loki gasped. His eyes were green.

Thor pushed the hair back from Loki’s ruined face and rained kisses down upon it. “The cave,” gurgled Loki. “Healing stones.” His eyes rolled back in his head.

Thor fairly flew into the cave, throwing things off shelves left and right until he found a small fabric wrapped parcel. His hands shook. The seconds it took him to run back outside seemed to last years. He crushed the stone over Loki’s face and the glowing powder settled into every wound. For an agonizing second nothing happened. Then, finally, Loki’s face started to knit back together. Thor held Loki to his breast and rocked him like a child.

“That is the second time I thought you dead,” he said into Loki’s hair. Loki’s hands grabbed his arms convulsively. “I cannot bear it again. I cannot.” He pulled back and put his hands on Loki’s face, turning his eyes up to look into them. Green. Thor smiled like a sunrise. 

“I love cheese,” Loki said.

“You hate cheese!” Thor beamed.

“I know.” Loki put a hand to his mouth and sobbed once.

 

* * *

 

Preparations went quickly after that. Loki needed only a few things for his spell, and fortunately the cavern was well stocked.

“How will it work?” Thor said.

“Even if I explained it you wouldn’t understand. All you need to know is that a doorway will open over there and you need only step through it to reach Asgard.”

“And what about you?”

“I will...not be joining you,” Loki said, looking away. “I need time. I don’t know if I wish ever to return there.” The truth seemed to come more easily to him now.

“How will I find you again?” asked Thor, clasping Loki’s neck. Loki did not flinch away this time.

“You won’t.”

“Ah.” Thor looked down, bitter disappointment climbing down his throat.

“I’ll find you,” Loki said. “When I’m ready.”

His lips caught Thor’s in a gentle kiss. 

“Thank you,” Loki breathed. Then he shoved Thor through a swirling vortex. Thor reached for Loki but his fingers closed on nothing. Then the portal was closed and Loki was gone.

Thor was on Asgard, alone.

He touched his lips and smiled. For the first time since his failed coronation he felt a glimmer of hope for the future.

* * *


End file.
